[1] From: Ken Tompkins <ken@odin.stockton.edu> (14)
Subject: Comparative Politics Project
[2] From: Charles Ess (34)
<DRU001D%SMSVMA.BitNet@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: terms?
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 09:10:32 -0400
From: Ken Tompkins <ken@odin.stockton.edu>
Subject: Comparative Politics Project
I am posting this for a colleague not on this list; it would be helpful if
members of this list would share it with their colleagues:
==========
Instructor of undergraduate comparative politics course seeks to put
his students online with their German, Japanese, and Russian peers. Any
overseas colleagues that might be interested in collaborating in such a
project can find more information at:
http://loki.stockton.edu/~sensibaw/cpproj.htm
William Sensiba
SOBL
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Pomona, NJ 08240
=========
Ken Tompkins
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 28 May 96 09:09:47 CDT
From: Charles Ess <DRU001D%SMSVMA.BitNet@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: terms?
A colleague (from an institution which, for reasons that will become
obvious, must remain unnamed) and I are searching for terms that describe
the following maneuvers:
1) The Thrasymachus maneuver: in Plato's _Republic_, Book I, the
archtype Sophist Thrasymachus is pictured as a "bathman," who, "after
having poured a great shower of speech into our ears all at once," (344d,
Bloom translation) seeks to physically remove himself from further
argument with Socrates.
A little more carefully: Thrasymachus interrupts the dialogue with an
opening insult (Socrates needs a wet nurse to wipe his nose - i.e., he's
speaking childish nonsense: 343a); bombards Socrates with a longish
speech (343b-344c), and then turns to go - i.e., to close off any further
debate by physically walking out.
I have observed some of my more agonistic (and, indeed, sophistic)
colleagues exhibit precisely this maneauver. Surely there's a term
for this effort to overpower one's dialogical partner through the
equivalent of mass bombardment followed by hasty retreat?
Perhaps rhetoricians have a name for it?
2) the administrative maneuver: an administrator who seeks to eliminate
a program begins, say, by first forbidding adjunct faculty from teaching
core courses. Since, as we know, students tend to cluster around
requirements, the student enrollments in the adjuncts' course go down.
But since this means the enrollments in the entire program go down - the
administrator can then publically point to these enrollment drops as
perfectly rational reasons for eliminating the program.
In sum: an initial, more or less secret and difficult to contest maneauver
(adjunct faculty have no basis for fighting senior administrators) leads,
apparently by design, to a publically demonstrable sign of weakness or
inadequacy - i.e., a reason or ground difficult to contest in ostensibly
open discussion.
Machiavelli must have this down somewhere. Any candidates for a term?
My thanks in advance,
Charles Ess
Drury College
Springfield, MO 65802 USA